


Interview: Lightning

by frankannestein



Series: Lightning and Hope [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII Series, Final Fantasy XIII-2, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:14:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22925464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frankannestein/pseuds/frankannestein
Summary: Oneshot. Aoede interviews Lightning in the new world.
Relationships: Hope Estheim/Lightning, Noel Kreiss & Paddra Nsu-Yeul, Oerba Dia Vanille/Oerba Yun Fang, Serah Farron/Snow Villiers
Series: Lightning and Hope [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1647616
Kudos: 9





	Interview: Lightning

My couch isn’t big enough for all of them.

I don’t realize how substantial Snow is until he enters my little apartment. The last time we met was at a bus stop in the sticks, after all. Nothing but open air, wide fields, and a sky that spanned forever like forever was a physical thing.

Thinking to offer it to one of the ladies, I get up from my chair, but they’ve already worked it out for themselves. Without hesitation, Snow sits on the floor between the sisters, scooping up Serah’s legs so he can drape them over his shoulder. He massages her shin, blithely ignoring the sound of irritation Lightning makes above him. Serah winds her arm through Lightning’s and rests her head on her shoulder. Hope’s face is politely bland as he laces his fingers. They look at me.

I sit back down, my notebook on my thigh.

I have no idea where to start.

Hope comes to my rescue. “Thank you for allowing all of us to come today,” he says in his calm voice. He’s handsome in a movie star way, more my idea of a young, prominent doctor than an introverted physicist, platinum hair a little long, posture politician-perfect. His green eyes are steady under heavy black lashes. “I know that you wanted to see Light –”

“And not our ugly mugs,” Snow cheerfully interjects. Serah giggles when Hope finishes his sentence by letting out his breath all at once.

“No, I should be thanking you for taking the time to meet with me again,” I assure them.

Hope smiles encouragingly, and I can’t help smiling back. Snow snorts.

“Yeah, right,” he says loudly. He’s giddy – I decide this by how his blue eyes sparkle – and can’t control himself. He’s such a kid. A big one. “Short of knocking her out and hogtying her, Light would never have come if it weren’t for us. Isn’t that right, Sis?”

He slings a muscled arm across Lightning’s lap.

I open my mouth – to do what? I ask myself wildly. Stop the explosion? – but I’m too late.

“I’m not your sister,” Lightning snaps, pushing his arm off as if it is something long dead and starting to smell. “I came because I said I would. Unlike some people, I keep my promises.”

It’s the first thing she’s said, and she’s already angry. Dismay pools in my middle. It’s been months since I started this project, which ended in the civil war that nearly claimed my life. Hope, Snow, Serah – all of them said it in one way or another: If I want the whole truth, I have to ask Lightning. Well, now Lightning is here, and I’m hopelessly tongue-tied while they bicker. I hold up a beseeching hand. “Um . . . excuse me?”

“When have I not?” Snow retorts, not hearing me, but in the same breath he cries, “Ow – hey!”

Pouting, he rubs his ear, right where Lightning’s knee intentionally whacked it. “Ooh, scary scary,” he adds when he catches sight of her scowl. An impish grin shows small, sharp teeth.

“Snow,” Hope sighs, his tone suggesting that he longs to say something a lot ruder.

Serah puts her hand on Snow’s head, her fingers and the ring one of them bears disappearing in the thick, blond spikes of his hair. A ring that wasn’t present when I last spoke with her.

“Behave, you,” she teases.

That’s all it takes. Obediently, they settle down. Snow stretches out his long legs, his unshaven cheek against Serah’s knees, and Lightning discreetly puts a couple of inches between them. This shifts her closer to Hope so that their hips and arms are touching, but she gives no indication that this matters to her at all. In fact, she struggles to maintain her scowl as Serah grins up at her. The fierce expression melts, and there’s nothing but resigned affection under it. Suddenly, Hope turns his face away. He props his elbow on the armrest, his hand in front of his mouth as if he’s hiding a smile.

I have to remind myself that these aren’t the names they have been born with, especially because they are the names they use with each other. Ancient names from another world. They _are_ Hope Estheim. Snow Villiers. Serah and Lightning Farron.

Who does that make me?

I finally know what I want to ask Lightning. I’ve stressed about it for so long, but there was really only one question all along.

So, heart pounding, I ask it.

“Why?”

The four people grouped around my couch become very still. I suspect that the others want to know the answer, too. My fingers tighten protectively on my notebook. Bracing myself, I look Lightning in the eyes, pleading, hoping she’ll understand. “Vanille told me something about you. She said, ‘She wanted everyone to be able to live with their eyes on the future, without being stripped of their past. For that, she battled god, and her victory won her this world – a new world for everyone to live in.’ ” I can quote Vanille without having to check my notes. Like a little girl with a favorite bedtime story, I’ve read the interviews so many times I know most of them by heart. “But how can I live in this present, looking at my future, if I’m still chained to the past? Why did you do this to us, to yourself?”

Lightning considers me for a long time. Very softly, she asks a question of her own. “May I see that?”

The silence is longer this time. Finally, I consent. I hold out my notebook, and Lightning takes it.

She opens it at random.

_. . . I kept encouraging them, telling them they’ve pushed themselves beyond their limits and created miracles again and again . . ._

Sazh’s words meet her first. I can tell by the way her lips part, and her eyes dart from side to side. I wonder if she can hear Sazh’s distinctive accent when she reads my loopy shorthand. Serah and Hope read over her shoulders, their expressions a mixture of affection and reminiscence. Lightning turns the pages with her fingertips, barely touching them.

Then Hope closes his eyes, taking a deep but soundless breath, his face pained. Lightning must have reached his account. What was it he’d said?

_. . . I thought it was a complete farce, myself. The words coming out of my mouth sounded noble, virtuous, but in the end, all I did amounted to nothing more than political posturing to win the people over. I sold them false hope. Again . . ._

Somehow, without moving, they draw closer together while Lightning turns more pages. Reliving the past in their own minds. Shutting me out.

It’s as if I can hear their testimonies again. Bits and pieces float through my mind. Snow’s deep voice, usually so jovial, was tight with regret that day, earnestness flushing pink across his face.

_. . . He was brilliant. He looked for a way to stop the Chaos, and never complained, not even once . . . He was our_ _–_ _no, you may think I_ _’_ _m exaggerating, but he was the hope for all mankind . . . Panic began to spread after Hope disappeared, and those in despair clung to Bhunivelze’s teachings in hopes of salvation . . . Bhunivelze was the one who erased hope . . ._

Serah is crying by the time Lightning flips to Noel’s interview. Not noisily, but she has to wipe her nose and turn away.

_. . . Serah’s death, the destruction of the world, they weren’t the fault of Caius alone. I had a hand in it, too . . . After years, decades, of fighting, when everyone was exhausted and about to throw in the towel, Snow was out there on the front lines, risking his life, and he showed all of us what the back of a fighter must look like . . ._ I remember the gleam in Noel’s eyes, reminding me of a hunting cat’s. He spoke bluntly to me, without apology . . . _All of us were a little unhinged . . ._

Lightning seeks out the last entries, and I think of the two women, Fang and Vanille, who could speak to each other without words. Their speeches entwined, two testimonies forming one, like the opposite halves of a single mollusk shell.

_. . . Everyone else had already lived through five hundred years of a dying world. You can’t fault them for wanting to depend on something. They were so tired inside . . ._

Fang first, then Vanille. That was how they spoke to me.

_. . . Light saved us. All of us . . ._

“Aoede,” Lightning says. She combs her bangs out of her eyes. At the gentleness of her smile, I want to weep. “That was your name, wasn’t it?”

“Back in that other world,” I whisper. I accept the notebook, but when Lightning’s fingers find mine and give them a squeeze, I look up, startled.

“These memories, Aoede. I didn’t save them.” Lightning releases me. “You did.”

_“Me?”_ I’m so taken aback that I nearly shout it.

“You.” She shifts restlessly on the couch. She darts a glance at Hope, and he nods at her to go on. She does. “Everyone held on to their own memories. People are born. They live, and they die. But their souls live on and remember. Because of that, we can find each other again. We can find our happiness. We’ll never be alone.”

Her slim fingers knit with Serah’s.

What she says next stabs me right in the heart. “There was something we each wanted to do that we never got the chance to do. Because of the fal’Cie. Because of the Chaos. Because of Bhunivelze.”

“Our lives were arrested the moment we became l’Cie,” Hope says, but it’s a question. “Or was it before that, when the Purge began?”

Lightning’s aquamarine eyes narrow, and her voice goes flinty. “Before even that. When Lindzei first built Cocoon. You said it yourself, Hope. We were pets of the fal’Cie. Cocoon. Ragnarök. The Purge. None of it should ever have happened.”

“You must have felt that way, too, Aoede,” Serah says. Her eyes are bluer than her sister’s, shining with gentleness and the remainder of her tears. “Now’s our chance. We are finally free to live the lives we were meant to have.”

I’m starting to see what they’re saying. Snow reaches up, engulfing Serah’s free hand in his large one. Their love is tangible and almost painful in its intensity. The l’Cie curse tore them apart, and they fought so hard to find each other again. Lebreau and Gadot told me how Snow, who was an orphan, had wanted one simple thing out of life: To marry the girl he loved and have a big family. As of now, right now, that wish still hasn’t come true. But it looks as though they aren’t waiting anymore. Nothing is standing in their way. Not this time.

On the other hand, Hope and Lightning do not touch, but something exists there between them. It’s like a magnetic field, humming with electricity. I can’t help but feel like I’m intruding on something private when I look at them. Except this time, it doesn’t shut me out. I’m part of it.

I, too, have a life to live. It doesn’t need a name, either my name now or that old one. It’s _my_ life.

For the rest of the interview, Lightning answers whatever question I put to her, but I don’t know what I ask. My shorthand fills several pages, and I will remember when I transcribe them. As the last of the evening light fades, I usher them to my door, thanking them, again, for their time.

“Hey,” Snow says, brows creased. “You’re coming too, right?”

“Coming?” I ask, bewildered. I blink up at him. “Where?”

“Didn’t you know?” He grins and gives me a thumbs up. “It’s Light’s twenty-first birthday. The last one we celebrated didn’t go over so well. I think it ended when she kicked me out of her house.”

“Except you didn’t go,” Lightning mutters, head ducked so that I can’t see her face. She crosses her arms tightly.

Twenty-one? I think, amazed. She’s so young. I don’t know why I expected her to be older.

Hope laughs, and she tch’s and turns her back on him. He isn’t put off; his fingers ferret out hers, coax them from a fist. He leads her into the hall. She goes, but stiffly, as if embarrassed.

“It’ll be fun. Come with us,” Serah says, tucked into Snow’s side.

It’s like walking from a dark room into a bright one. From chill to warmth. From ignorance to truth. I put my notebook on my kitchen table. I try for a smile of my own. “All right,” I say.

“All _right!”_ Snow echoes, too loudly for the hall and the apartments leading off it, and pumps the air with a fist. “Let’s party!”

Lightning rolls her eyes, but she’s fighting a smile.

And the rest of us? We laugh. Together.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks go to Galvea (http://www.gamefaqs.com/users/Galvea /boards) for providing English translations of the Japanese novella “Reminiscence ~Tracer of Memories~” online (http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/681990-lightning-returns-final-fantasy-xiii/69438054?page=5). Without all of the hard work Galvea put into that project, the one-shots “Long Distance” and “Interview: Lightning” would not have become realities.


End file.
